First of all, I love LibreOffice very much as the last bastion of sanity in classic document suites, and I love what Collabora is trying to do with the online piece. So, first, a million thanks. Truly.

Now, to put on the the "feedback is a gift" and "radical transparency" caps.

From the screenshot comparison in TFA: The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony. That's a huge step backward. The big strength of LibreOffice or Collabora Desktop Classic is that it has a sane UI/menubar visual paradigm. (Which MS obliterated eons ago.)

But let's talk about what matters: Collabora (the online document suite) is slow as heck.

It needs to be fast-updating for shared multi-user docs, like Google Docs/Sheets or Word/Excel 365.

That should be the top priority. Full stop.

LibreOffice works fine for desktop. But, for Collabora, the web experience needs to be fast. The lag in Collabora is simply unacceptable.

People expect online, and they expect collaborative, and they expect nearly instantaneous updates (at least not painful to type and wait for screen to update).

Talk about misplaced priorities. In my very humble opinion.

At least to me, it seems most regular users would struggle and have their productivity reduced attempting to learn a new word processing UI. Everyone and their extended family has been trained on Microsoft products, with Microsoft UI design.

I think this matters for the paying customers of things like Collabora and LibreOffice, as they're using it in a work environment. Not at home.

> most regular users would...have their productivity reduced...this matters for the paying customers...using it in a work environment

If the concern is business productivity, then it might be interesting to read that at least some research indicates (perhaps counterintuitively to some) that classic style is better:

"...results indicate that Excel 2003 is significantly superior to Excel 2007 in all the dependent variables...results support the conclusion that the user interface of Excel 2007 did change for the worst in comparison with the user interface of the 2003 version." [0]

[0] Morales (2010), A COMPARATIVE USABILITY STUDY OF MICROSOFT OFFICE 2007 AND MICROSOFT OFFICE 2003, https://scholar7-dev.uprm.edu/server/api/core/bitstreams/a03...

The question is, if you grant that a different design is better in a vacuum, how to weigh that against the benefits of existing familiarity.

That's easy. Would you rather have your coworkers working with an artificial handicap, or not?

Some people give regular users too little credit. A major reason they are such terrible users is because the software they are given is terrible.

Fix the software, and the users' ability is, to a measurable degree, fixed.

Existing familiarity is nothing compared with the daily additive benefits of better tools.

I agree - we're coming up on 20 years of the ribbon, it is too jarring to go back to the fixed toolbars and the vast majority of computer users have no experience with the "old way."

> It needs to be fast-updating for shared multi-user docs, like Google Docs/Sheets or Word/Excel 365.

In my experience, Google Docs has this, but realtime collaboration with Word is unusable. Which is interesting, because that means a huge number of existing Office 365 users have yet to experience it.

I wonder if there's an opportunity there.

The internal guts of Collabora's data models and such are based on the LibreOffice code, right? My understanding is that it's really hard to get Google Docs-like performance with real-time multi-user editing if the whole app wasn't engineered from the ground up to make it possible, which LibreOffice wasn't.

Unless Microsoft complete re-wrote Office to add Sharepoint collaboration features, they seem to have managed it.

I would not be surprised to learn that substantial parts of the core of Office were rewritten to make that possible. Unlike Collabora/LibreOffice, Microsoft is one of the most well-resourced organizations in the world and can afford to do that kind of colossally expensive project. Of course, they'd need an extremely compelling reason to do so, but Google Docs was an existential threat to their market share.

Also, other commenters report that the real-time collaborative editing experience in Office is more sluggish than in Google Docs, and this is consistent with my own admittedly very limited anecdotal experience, and if this has persisted for years it may well be for deep architectual reasons.

> The new one looks all Microsoft-Ribbony

LibreOffice has a Ribbon interface option, too.

If both remain available options, that's fine. Sometimes the new thing becomes the default, and then the old thing gets dropped.

That is not going to happen with LibreOffice.

I'm currently working on a set of documents with 3 or 4 other people in collabora and we have no more problems than with office 365. It works. You can type simultaneously even in the same line (one types while another corrects the spelling of the previous word, etc), no problem at all.

If anyone from Collabora Office is looking, there is a weird paragraph with syntax-colored HTML in https://www.collaboraonline.com/blog/collabora-online-now-av... "*A Note on Early Releases"

Seems to be a dumbed down UI with less customization, but built with shiny new browser tech (Canvas, WebGL, CSS)! Also limited macros. No embedded Java

Yes. From the original announcement: “HTML + JavaScript-based front end, powered by your system’s native browser engine (like WebKit, Chromium, etc.)”

From the email-walled “whitepaper” [0]: “If you need tools like the Base database module (including Java-based components) or the full Math module, Collabora Office Classic remains the right choice - Collabora Office isn’t trying to replicate those. Collabora Office will run macros, but for advanced macro authoring and debugging you should use Classic. For extreme Calc workloads (think complex Solver models or analysis across hundreds of thousands of rows) Classic is likely the better fit.”

[0] https://paste.c-net.org/FuriousWhistler

> No embedded Java

This is a great feature!

I installed it from Windows Store, opened a blank text document, and the styles box appears to contain white text on a white background.

I opened a blank spreadsheet, typed in something, tried to create a pivot table, and it only expanded the selection without showing the dialog box.

I restarted it and those bugs were fixed, but the Pivot Table UI is still the ugly non-interactive one found in LibreOffice (which Excel got rid of 26+ years ago).

Uninstalled.

Yeah, unfortunately this seems to combine the UI and performance issues of LibreOffice with new issues from the new front end.

It also has a basic mistake in text editor UX: the caret blinks independently of caret movement. This means that the caret is invisible half of the time while trying to navigate text. Most text editors avoid this by restarting the blink cycle to force the caret visible on each movement.

I have super light office requirements these days and those are satisfied with OnlyOffice (https://www.onlyoffice.com/). I do believe it's an Electron app but works quite fast in my personal experience. (Probably faster than LibreOffice if it's still like the last time I used it).

It's open source: https://github.com/ONLYOFFICE/

I hadn't looked at the Github page in a while. They seem to have a ton of new features one of which regrettably is a very front end center AI presence.

I've been using it on my phone for the occasional document and its been quite nice, much quicker/accurate than collabora office

Collabora vs LibreOffice branding is always quite confusing to me.

How is this project related to LibreOffice and also to what used to be called LibreOffice Online? (And Collabora Office Classic. And Collabora Online)

I was also curious. It says this in about the middle of the homepage:

"We love LibreOffice. We are privileged to be the largest code contributors to the codebase, Collabora employs several founders of The Document Foundation, and many of the top committers. We offer a Long Term supported product based on LibreOffice, branded as Collabora Office Classic, and are deeply grateful for and acknowledge many skilled community contributors we work alongside, as well as the incredible range of features that LibreOffice code enables."

I think - not sure - that

* Collabora Online is rebranded, and hosted, LibreOffice Online

* or rather - LibreOffice Online never really existed and it was always Collabora Online Development Edition (I cannot find any LibreOffice Online that's not just Collabora Online Development Edition)

* Collabora Office for Desktop is Collabora Online, packaged as a desktop app

* Collabora Office Classic is just rebranded LibreOffice

* Collabora (the company) is one of the biggest contributors to LibreOffice

All of that is true. Collabora has put a lot of time and money into LibreOffice.

On Wikipedia, there is a fairly complicated timeline chart of the various LibreOffice variants [1]. Same article also says

> Ecosystem partner Collabora uses LibreOffice as upstream code to provide a web-based suite branded as Collabora Online, along with apps for platforms not officially supported by LibreOffice, including Android, ChromeOS, iOS and iPadOS.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LibreOffice#History

Download button takes me to windows store. That doesn't work on my machine. On Linux got as a flatpak.

Nice, does it have Excel for Windows hotkeys?

You can customize them: https://help.collaboraoffice.com/latest/en-GB/text/scalc/04/...

This is help for the classic LibreOffice app, not the new web thing (which appears to have no settings?)

There has been a conflict building up within the LibreOffice ecosystem, with Collabora publishing a desktop version of their web-focused LO-based suite, while TDF (The Document Foundation) has decided to hire several developers to work on an on-line and potentially mobile version. So, essentially, both "sides" are taking each other on, even though a plurality of LibreOffice commits are made by Collabora employees. There have also been some "beheading" in the form of the expulsion of a few members of the TDF, particularly the former long-time TDF board-of-directors chairperson who is with Collabora (previously Allotropia) and a couple of others - a highly contentious decision which some argue is contrary to the TDF statutes.

This is a no way a complete or a fair summary of everything that has gone on; and it's been simmering for a number of years now.

Due disclosure: I am a TDF trustee.

--------------

About Collabora Office for Desktop itself: Personally, I don't see it as being up to par. The main thing going for it is that its ribbon-ish interface is more polished than LibreOffice's. But - I don't like ribbons; and features are missing; and it feels clunkier than LO itself.

> the charter of projects like LibreOffice are fundamentally broken—they're aiming to replace Microsoft Office by cloning it, but Microsoft Office itself is part of a busted paradigm

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=24759573>

> The LibreOffice project's imprimatur should be to stop existing[…] The editing paradigm perpetuated by the legacy of MS Office is a dead end.

<https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23795918>

I'll amend my previous position and say that the charter should be to (a) as much as possible change the menu and dialog structure to match whatever the last "good" version of the Microsoft Office UI was, but still ultimately focus on (b) doing everything I said in those other comments.

Hmm. I can't actually find the link to start using it to try it out. ? It offers a Free Demo that is behind some kind of details harvesting form. I don't want a demo. Is this usable enough to move a small (6 people) team away from google sheets ? hard to say since i can't test it and it doesn't say what the cost is. Stop hiding your shit behind hard to navigate/use/privacy invading bullshit. Just let us use the stuff. If you must gimp it, do it in a way that doesn't stop us using it first.

On my screen, the words "Download Now" are the biggest on the page.

Is your team looking at the cloud version or a local install?

If latter would suggest checking current version of LibreOffice (which is Collabra Office Classic) as a local (i.e. on client computer) install. If former, then I'd imagine you will have to fill the form in to get access.

Edit: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46901100 Another commenter has summarised the differences between Collabora Office and Collabora Office Classic (aka LibreOffice) for us

Man, welcome to the current millenium. Somewhat. I really love FOSS but LibreOffice’s bulky and awkward UI was always too much for me. Happy to see Collabora doing it a bit better.

Is it based on some open source core? Like the original Collabora Office?

looks like LibreOffice

I have not tried LibreOffice Online in many years, but it does not look like LibreOffice at all. It has the MSOffice ribbon clone. It is closer to OnlyOffice

It is LibreOffice at its heart, but wrapped with a web-techs UI, AFAIK.

LibreOffice has had a ribbon for a while.

I know, but it was not this direct ms office clone.

Why is 'Differences between Collabora Office and Collabora Office Classic' document gated behind a email-wall? Nothing but enshittification.

https://www.collaboraonline.com/case-studies/differences-bet...

Don't bother, I tried with a disposable email address and they make you subscribe to a mailing list before sending you the download link. When you do eventually get it, it's a 3 page puff marketing PDF.

I converted it to TXT and pulled out the only bit of interest here:

                  Collabora Office                              Collabora Office Classic
                  Fresh, modern UX                                Classic, established UX
  Javascript & CSS UI to match Collabora Online                    VCL-based classic UI
       Simpler settings / streamlined defaults           Very extensive options, menus & dialogs
                       No Java                       Java used for some features/wizards/DB drivers
                 No built-in Base app                                Includes Base UI
                     Runs macros                    Full macro editor & advanced BASIC/Python/UNO
      Modern web tech (Canvas, WebGL, CSS)                         Custom toolkit (VCL)
     Fast to iterate (edit JS, fewer recompiles)      Core/C++ changes typically require recompiles
   Initial release – Enterprise Support is coming            Long term Enterprise Supported
       Quick Start Guides and video tutorials                  Extensive manuals & books

But how will we spam you if you don't give us email?

Even funnier when you try that from the "freedom" whitepage download https://www.collaboraonline.com/case-studies/opendesk/

If you don't give an email address, it doesn't even prompt you to ttry again. It just bugs out and redirects to a home page with a broken URL attempting to inject HTML from client side.

That's strange because the only reason for a user to use OpenOffice/Collabra is because they don't want to deal with an annoying company that makes a far superior product. If the inferior product is also run by an annoying company, why bother?

Yeah, I'd say that's the gist of it altogether... I get they want to monetize hosting/support etc.. but they should really try not to gatekeep what should be basic/public information.

I'd still probably put Collabra above Google Docs, but definitely a step below even MS Office Online, err 365, err CoPilot App or whatever the hell they're calling it now... (naming issues not withstanding). Though MS has been enshitifying the offline versions of office a lot, not to mention Outlook in particular.

Aside: Why MS hasn't done a version of "Microsoft Access Online" with a WASM port of VBA in order to lift/shift Access apps into a hosted environment that's backed by Azure SQL under the covers is kind of beyond me. I mean, it shouldn't take too much effort at this point with the level of tooling MS has been capable of.

Access was the distilled VB + Database apps kind of thing that a lot of SOHO really thrived on, and they could totally (re)capture that market with a bit of legacy uplift/support along with a newer model/design. Displacing the winforms models with webforms and a dedicated server/service system. 3 versions to start, a legacy/support, a bridge and a new model where it's TS/JS and monaco for editing instead of VBA/wasm/webforms in a browser/canvas. People are running older versions of Windows in wasm/x86 emulation... making that pretty and wrapping hosted access runtimes should be somewhat reasonable. Shouldn't it?

I briefly tried it : I don't see the point, there is no way to connect it to your online collabora instance or directly to Nextcloud or anything except your local files.

Just use LibreOffice at this point, at least it has native performances and is not an app bundled inside a browser.

> Just use LibreOffice at this point, at least it has native performances

I don't think you've ever used LibreOffice if you think it in any way fits the description "performant". It's a great project but I wouldn't exactly call it snappy.

I use regularly both libreoffice and collabora online and I can say the former is snappy compared to the second. It can take a longer time to open thought, mostly on Windows.

> The New Collabora Office for Desktop

> online.

Wrong answer. I want offline.

There is no reason for an office programm to connect to the internet.

They could as well have called it Collabora Offline. It’s the web app’s UX but locally.

I use Collabora online all the time (via Nextcloud) but I don't quite understand why I'd use this over LibreOffice on the desktop, which feels significantly more powerful than the online tool.

The few screenshots they show make this look similar to the existing online tool, which is fine for a lot of work, but like Word Online hits a wall with more complex documents.

OnlyOffice is nice if you ignore the Russian background of it. I wouldn't trust it.

https://www.reddit.com/r/BuyFromEU/comments/1j7zlf2/onlyoffi...

As a devout supporter of Ukraine, I'm not sure it's fair to denounce the FOSS version of the app just because it was built by developers that reside in Russia. We all know that the company outwardly stating "we are against the invasion of Ukraine" wouldn't end well for them, and as long as you're not paying for it, I don't see a huge difference using this vs. your average American software (in which the developers also reside in a country with questionable government leadership). Enlighten me if I'm wrong though

It’s about trusting the build. You can’t always know what happened between source and release.

It doesn’t matter. If the FSB knocks on their door and says “add this extra code to your builds or you’ll disappear into the basement of the Lubyanka”, what do you think they’ll say?

This is honestly news to me. I had no idea.

That's a "I may afford you, but I don't have people budget for those dumb calls" button for me.

That still doesn't tell me what it costs, though.

This is probably great software. But the design, both of the site and the office software, looks so dated, it doesn’t even tempt me to try it

I don't care about dated looks. I do find MS Office's pressure to use OneDrive frustrating and annoying. Honestly, older UIs for office suite products just feel more direct and responsive than the clever ribbon bars. Excel used to be svelte (25 years ago or more...) Now it feels bloated and clumsy. LibreOffice Calc (same parentage as Collabora Office) feels more like Excel used to feel. Similar complaints about Word.

The open source world needs more designers.

A lot of open-source doesn't have a process to integrate and follow a design strategy from a designer. A business can mandate that work be done to adapt/follow a given design strategy... for open-source it's often harder to do so... and even then you face the same or more resistance to change.

It took basically a corporate control for Audacity to make its' difficult transition to a better design from its' mediocre one. That said, I'd love to see something modern transformed from The Gimp's core in a similar way. That doesn't even begin to cover what you might want in terms of inter-app collaboration...

KdenLive, Blender, Gimp, Krita, InkScape, Audacity and other tooling, as an example, all use different UI/UX base libraries, and no clean way to cross-integrate features between them if someone wanted to assemble an open-source Adobe alternative. There's no baseline equivalent to even MS/Office's use of COM/DCOM for interoperability.

Good points. Designers need to be first-class citizens whose input is sought early on, not to attempt to make a purse out of the finished pig's ear. RFCs are a venue for this. Designers, for their part, need to share their ready-to-go libraries in all the popular frontend frameworks. The two could also collaborate on developing tools to automate design linting, similar to automated code review programmers use.

For the past week or so I’ve been using pencil.dev and I’m impressed. It’s like a local Figma that connects to Claude code or cursor, and you can just ask it to design stuff

It definitely has its bugs and it eats up tokens/context like crazy. But it make product development so much easier and faster, while providing great design

Looking at what they did to commercial software that used to have excellent, high density UIs, maybe they should stay where they are.

It is actually very, very janky and behaves like someone tried to reimplement ~15 years old Office UI in JavaScript. Not in a good way.

I really, really want them to be successful, but I cannot pretend it's a pleasure to use at all.

When I tried it last, it was painfully slow. Have there been any improvements on the performance front lately?

Typing in a word processor should not have input lag in 2025. It wasn't just a little lag, but the type and watch it catch up kind of lag.

It's laggy on MacBook Pro M4 Max. I have no idea what is it doing.

Could you be more specific?

Working with data I need to be objective, and while thinking objectively I prefer brutal/minimal ist UIs

It looks like MS Office, what's so bad about it?

It looks like a 2015 wordpress template